Mannequin Pussy, which plays Orpheum in Tampa, Florida on Oct. 26, 2024. Credit: Millicent Hailes

The latest album from Philly punk quartet Mannequin Pussy might as well be the one that goes gold.

I Got Heaven steps away from many of the motifs that the band has focused on in years past, and is described by a press release as a record that is “deeply concerned with desire, the power in being alone, and how to live in an unfeeling and unkind world.” Even Anthony Fantano, the Internet’s busiest music critic, enjoyed it.

The band’s annual Tampa Bay gig rolls into Orpheum this weekend, during which it will perform the vast majority of I Got Heaven and more.

Ahead of the show, frontwoman Marisa “Missy” Dabice told Creative Loafing Tampa about the best gig she ever saw being a recent Ben Gibbard double-feature.

Tickets to see Mannequin Pussy play Tampa’s Orpheum on Saturday, Oct. 26 are still available and cost $25.

In some ways, that’s a tough call because I have really been extremely blessed to see so many different concerts that have been life-changing in different ways. But the one sticks out as the most recent? I think it was like, October 2023. We had just ended this brutally long and very intense tour. We ended in Los Angeles, and I was just feeling like a completely depleted shell of myself.

Me, [and my bandmates] Bear, Kaleen and Maxine had gotten tickets to see The Postal Service and Death Cab [For Cutie] show at the Hollywood Bowl, because they were performing their albums in full. They’re still doing that, but they just announced they’re gonna go back to being on hiatus. I was feeling like such shit, and I was feeling so tired. I didn’t want to be around people, I didn’t want to be around noise at all, so I was talking to Bear and I was like “you know what? I don’t think I’m gonna go tonight.” And Bear, I don’t think would ever push me to do anything I don’t wanna do, but in that moment, he very gently—it’s kinda dramatic *laughs*—he put his hands on my shoulders and was like “what would teenage you do?” In that moment, I was like “OK, you’re absolutely right. I was obsessed with these bands when I was younger. These albums mean so much to me. We have to go. I’ve never been to the Hollywood Bowl before.”

We went, and I think within the first note of the first song, I just started sobbing, just because it felt so good to hear a song I love so much in this beautiful space, surrounded by people who were just as equally as excited as I was, and reliving. I don’t know, there’s something about listening to a band that you were so in love with when you were a teenager, and then as an adult, seeing the way that music has informed and shifted your life to put you into these places where you’re still able to see these bands. But the entire concert was just incredible, and I think me and Bear were crying together at one point, and we were like, screaming and dancing. And then, when the Postal Service started, it was like a dance party, because that album [Give Up] is like that.

Just everything about the production of it, too. Only recently has Mannequin Pussy gotten to a position where we’re able to afford production and lighting design, and the lighting design for Death Cab and Postal Service was among the greatest that I’ve ever seen at a show. It just complimented the entire experience so well. It felt like such a curated experience that felt so cathartic, and I think because I had been in a position where I had been performing for people for seven weeks and really depleted myself, I forgot about just how incredible the experience of going to a show as an audience member can be. It really does cleanse you, and refills back up your cup. I went in there feeling completely empty and depleted, and I came out feeling like I had just slept for a month or something. It was just so phenomenal, and I feel really, really lucky I got to see it.